RESOURCES - SINGLE AND DIVORCING PARENTS

Sean's Story | NBC Dateline | Meredith Viera Interviews Sean Goldman

Dateline NBC aired the most remarkable and incredibly moving hour long interview on Friday, April 27, 2012. Meredith Viera interviewed Sean Goldman--the center of a high-profile international abduction case that ended with Sean's return from Brazil with his father on Christmas Eve in 2009. I've read the studies about the harm that parental abduction can and does do to children. What could be more devastating to a child that being taken and then being told "Your Mom/Dad doesn't want you" or "Your Mom/Dad died" or, as in Sean's case: "This is your new father?"

Those studies, clinical in nature, could never communicate the harm to a child of parental abduction as did Viera's interview with Sean Goldman. As a family lawyer who has reunited many children with their biological custodial parent after a family abduction, I am grateful that the next time I am asked "how can the child be at risk--he/she is with his/her parent?" that I will be able to point to this incredible interview as evidence of the devastation. Thankfully David Goldman has been able to guide his son to recovery--as you will see in the Dateline program.

Dateline NBC has made the hour-long interview available to the public. I am grateful to be able to make it part of my blog post and archives. It is my greatest hope that Viera's interview will change people's minds about parental abduction being "not harmful." I urge you to view the 1-hour program and then to contact your senator in Washington and to urge passage of "The Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction, Prevention and Return Act" introduced by Senator Chris Smith. This legislation could result in many, many more happy endings for left-behind parents and their children.

Due to the length of the program, it must be embedded in this blog in segments.